The Galaxy Z Fold 8 is no longer the top of Samsung’s foldable range. At Galaxy Unpacked in London this week, the company expanded its book-style folding line into a trio for the first time, unveiling the Galaxy Z Fold 8, a first-ever Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra above it, and the Galaxy Z Flip 8 alongside. Pre-orders opened on 22 July, including in Australia, with general availability in the United States from 7 August, according to Samsung’s newsroom. The foldables shared the London stage with a refreshed line of Galaxy watches, but three folding phones in a single line-up made the handsets the unmistakable headline act.
The Ultra badge is doing what it did for the Galaxy S series: giving Samsung somewhere to put its most extreme engineering and its most extreme price. The Fold 8 Ultra measures just 4.1 mm unfolded, opens to an 8.0 inch main display, and packs a 200 megapixel main camera and a 5,000 mAh battery, all for US$2,099.99, or AU$2,999 locally per TechRadar’s launch-day pricing roundup. Eighteen months ago a folding phone this thin was a concept video. Now it is a pre-order page.
Samsung is framing the whole line-up around AI rather than hinges. “As AI becomes more agentic, mobile devices will become the most personal entry point to experiences that understand and adapt to each user. By setting a new standard for foldables, we are once again advancing the premium mobile experience and opening the next era of intelligence to more people,” said TM Roh, the head of Samsung’s Device eXperience division, in the launch announcement.
What the Galaxy Z Fold 8 line-up actually offers
The standard Galaxy Z Fold 8 remains the volume seller of the family, and it has slimmed down to 4.5 mm unfolded and 201 grams while keeping a 7.6 inch main display. It runs the same Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 for Galaxy chip as the Ultra, carries a 4,800 mAh battery with 45 W charging, and uses a dual 50 megapixel rear camera setup where the Ultra gets its 200 megapixel sensor plus a 50 megapixel ultra-wide and a telephoto. It is priced from US$1,899.99, or AU$2,699 in Australia. The Ultra is, curiously, the heavier phone at 215 grams despite being the thinner one, the cost of the bigger camera hardware and the larger 8.0 inch screen.
The Galaxy Z Flip 8 walks a different path. The clamshell keeps its pocketable format with a 6.9 inch main display and a 4.1 inch cover screen, but Samsung has fitted it with its own Exynos 2600 chip rather than the Snapdragon silicon in its bigger siblings, along with a 4,300 mAh battery and a 50 megapixel main camera. At US$1,199.99, or AU$1,949 locally, it stays the affordable entry to folding phones, and TechRadar notes Samsung is pitching its new camera features squarely at vloggers. Storage runs from 256 GB to 1 TB across the two Folds and up to 512 GB on the Flip, in colour ranges built around graphite and cream with online-exclusive shades for each model.
The software story is where Samsung spent most of its stage time. Galaxy AI has been reworked for each form factor, with Gemini-powered features reaching across more than 40 apps, proactive tools such as Now Brief, and a Personal Data Engine that Samsung says keeps the sensitive learning on the device behind Knox encryption. Buyers also get a six month trial of Google AI Pro thrown in. Whether anyone needs a 200 megapixel camera in a phone that folds in half is a question Samsung would rather you didn’t ask.
What happens next
The competitive stakes are higher than the spec sheet suggests. Foldables remain the one premium segment where Samsung sets the pace rather than chasing Apple, and the Ultra exists to hold that ground against increasingly thin Chinese rivals pushing into the category. Splitting the Fold into two tiers also quietly raises the ceiling on what a mainstream buyer might spend: AU$2,999 is deep into laptop territory, and Samsung is betting the Ultra name carries the same permission to charge more that it earned on the S series.
For Australian buyers the decision window is already open. Pre-orders are live through Samsung and the major carriers, with TechRadar reporting launch offers that include trade-in bonuses and carrier discounts running to hundreds of dollars, and Telstra, Optus and Vodafone all listing the range. Samsung’s own store is sweetening the launch window with trade-in credits and discounted storage upgrades, and local stock has been the weak point of previous Fold launches, so an on-time August arrival would itself be a small statement. The phones themselves reach customers in early August.
The thing to watch over the next quarter is whether the Ultra cannibalises the standard Fold or genuinely grows the category. Samsung has spent eight generations arguing that folding phones are the future of the premium market. With three models, two chipsets and a AU$1,000 spread between them, the Galaxy Z Fold 8 family is the first real test of whether that future has room for a whole product line rather than a single expensive experiment.
